Remember the general who tried to run through the wall, in the opening scene of The Men Who Stare At Goats? Turns out, theoretically, he was right.
- Is it the worst of times, or the best of times, to see Egypt’s ancient wonders?
- The Egyptians had their pyramids, the Romans had aqueducts, Victorians their railways. We have gigantic glass and steel boxes filled with ‘offices’.
- Ancient navigation methods are again being used in the Pacific.
- Your biological clock controls a lot more than you think.
- Embryonic stem cells could restore sight to the blind.
- Bright lights make people more honest, altruistic and ethical, and less selfish, according to new research.
- Chimps, orangutans have human-like memories.
- Scientists crack wolves’ howling code.
- Monsters of the Deep: Jellyfish threaten the world’s seas.
- The Secret Service agent who collared cybercrooks by selling them fake IDs.
- Forensic linquistics: How statistical clues in all texts reveal authorship.
- Science writers reveal themselves with their sentence adverbs. Top 20 chart. Unsurprisingly, financial authors commit far worse literary sins.
- Spotter’s analytics tool recognises sarcasm posted online.
- Locking out the voices of dissent.
- Your political rants are too awful even for Reddit.
Thanks, Ed.
Quote of the Day:
There are deep social ramifications in surveillance societies that are often overlooked, especially once they become established intergenerationally. Perhaps the best example is not so much East Germany’s “Stasi”, but rather Coucescou’s Romania, where truly every action observable was reported and being seen in public with the wrong expression could be sufficient to draw attention of the secret police. Those born into such societies learn quickly that to survive one must be deliberately deceptive at all times. This quickly bleeds into all other human relations, personal, family, commercial, etc. That is what the true future of the US is, and the true cost of surveillance is the social destruction of society itself.
gnudyfet’s comment under Tomorrow’s Surveillance: Everyone, everywhere, all the time.
